Month: June 2013

With the continued failure from Gameforge to cater to European players, there’s a high influx of them starting over with North American Aion provided directly by NCsoft, which requires no subscription, has affordable shop items and really good support. Many more than ever are now switching over as they released the 4.0 update, with Europe lacking behind for another 2-3 months, and most probably we’ll get a dumbed down version of it like happened with 3.0 and 3.5, no fts, no rifts, no xp boost etc etc.

The main issue with moving over however is latency, as crossing the ocean involves a big spike in ping which for some people makes the game almost unplayable.

In my case, this is the ping I normally get:

Needless to say this is a pain to do anything.. skills have a big delay, talking to npcs, even running around..
Patching tcp stack with ARM (does the same as Leatrix and a bit more, under “Help/Latency Fix”) is still not enough, since that is just a registry setting.

The only way I could get a decent ping to NA has been through using Battleping tunneling service, with these results:

now that’s so much nicer, ~playable and stable ping with no spikes. If you live in the UK or a European main city you are likely to get even better ping, probably 100-150 is possible.

To get started, download their installer here: http://www.battleping.com/
You can even use it for free to try it, no registration required, as a guest it will let you use it for 20 minutes and then disconnect (then you can restart it and use another 20 minutes, however the Aion client will also get disconnected).

To properly set it up, follow these simple steps:

1) Pick a server. “Texas 4” worked the best for me, but you may try different ones and see if you get a better ping. NC Aion servers are located in Texas. Note that you might see better ping in the server choice window with different servers, but it doesn’t mean you will have that ping in-game. For example, Florida/East Coast reports 150-160 ping, but then in-game it becomes 220-230; then Texas4 reports 185-190, and that’s what I get in game, with sometimes ~200 at most. So test a bit and see what works best for you.

2) Click on “Game Connection, and wait for the green message “Connected”.

3) Launch your game. You will notice it says “Game detected”. If you don’t see that, then something is wrong, and the game isn’t using batlleping. In the case of Aion sometimes it only shows up after you get to the Login screen and connect to the game.

If you switch servers to test for better ping, you will need to click on Game Connection again.

There are a few other similar services lately, I tried a few in the past but BP gave me the best ping, so I stayed with them. They seem to provide the most stable service after being in the business for already quite a few years.

Their price seems also quite reasonable, with the current rate exchange it’s around 4,1 euro/month, or 3,8 if you pay for 3 months at once.

Note that if you play only in Europe, you can still benefit from using this, most people with 100-120 ping can usually lower it to 50-60 and even if you have low ping already, with BP you will eliminate random lag spikes and get a more stable connection to the game.

Hackforge anounced today they will be translating the game for spanish, italian, polish, turkish, ..

I will not be working on having ARM run with these clients, as has been the case for french and german.

ARM will remain working with only English clients, although it will still work with others if you use the North American Aion data pak files. Translations for the program are also not planned, there is no need to translate software when it’s available in English.

Back a year ago when Hackforge acquired the European Aion userbase, they said something like “gold pack will prevent bots and goldsellers etc”, implying the system would prevent that and also provide the support staff for it and a better customer service. The GP costs 10 euro/month ($13).

I see our money is put to good use preventing botters and goldselling, and not just inflating their income with this bullshit model, the worst in the entire history of Aion publishers: pay-to-win + required subscription + botting + goldselling + no GM staff + no customer service.

Spams users with in-game surveys to direct them to their cash shop, most times without any special event or bonus, just a reminder that they can buy stuff at the shop. This while the European version managed by hackforge has a subscription fee (through gold pack, 10 euro), is Pay-2-win, allows hackers and botters, has nothing you could call customer service, GMs who play the game abusing their powers, their staff keeps threatening and banning users in the forums for no good reasons and behave like a dictatorship built by their abusive practices, showing a complete lack of respect towards the players who pay for their wages.

NA Aion:

Sometimes gives a survey to remind players about the Atlas feature, which is free, through which they can claim lots of useful and free rewards like manastones, dyes, enchant stones, some beginner pvp jewels: http://gameguide.na.aiononline.com/aion/atreian#ElyosPath
At the same time, they are comepletely free, no hidden subscription, great support, polite and kind mods and customer support staff who treat players as people.

————————————————————–

Something goes wrong with the servers, reboot, some bug etc, what do they do?

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

disable

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.